A Festschrift in Honour of A.V.C. Schmidt

Series:

The thirteen essays in this book, presented in honour of Dr A.V.C. (Carl) Schmidt, are designed to reflect the range of his interests. Dr Schmidt, who was a Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford from 1972 until his retirement in 2011, is best known for his comprehensive four-text edition of Piers Plowman, the fruit of a lifetime’s work on that text. He has also made a major contribution to the study of Chaucer and the medieval English contemplatives, and these authors also find a place in this collection. The essays presented here are intended to build upon the legacy of Carl Schmidt’s exemplary scholarship.

Prices

Chapter Price

Extract

← xxii | 1 → SEAMUS PERRY

Classically, being a Balliol man involves something more than being a man whose academic position happens to be at Balliol. That is a lesson I learned when, still a youngish fresh Fellow, I dutifully wore a College tie to a gaudy: ‘Good of you to wear that’, said a well-disposed pillar of the Senior Common Room as we trudged up the staircase to high table, ‘especially seeing as you’re not one’. No: a real Balliol man is a tutor at the College who has previously been an undergraduate there. It is a stiff test that most of humanity is bound to fail: it excludes, for example, many recent Masters as well as most of the Fellowship; and, in truth, these more inclusive days have seen it become a dwindling category. But the Senior Common Room I joined still boasted several representatives of the species. A few weeks after arriving at the College a colleague explained to me at lunch that he had not only succeeded his tutor but even moved in to occupy his old set. When I expressed surprise at such an odd turn of events, he asked me rhetorically: what is an academic career, but moving from a Balliol chair to the left of the fireplace to the well-worn Balliol chair to the right?

Of that select group, Carl Schmidt was one of the most celebrated. Balliol man and boy, a prodigious undergraduate whose startling intellectual prowess was still vividly...

You are not authenticated to view the full text of this chapter or article.

This site requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books or journals.